Meet Marcela Shine
Marcela Shine is a founder, operator, and fractional Chief Operating Officer with over two decades of experience leading growth, marketing, and business operations across venture-backed startups and scaled organizations.
She helps founders and leadership teams turn complexity into clear operating systems their teams can actually run.
Founder. Operator. Speaker. Proud mama.
Speaking on stage at a Comcast event
Why Ready, Plan, Grow! Exists
Marcela founded Ready, Plan, Grow! to make executive-level business fundamentals accessible to founders who want clarity without intimidation.
After years inside venture-backed companies and national entrepreneurship programs, she saw the same pattern repeat. Founders were working hard, but lacked clear systems, realistic financial plans, and the operational confidence needed to grow.
Ready, Plan, Grow! exists to change that. The work focuses on practical planning, realistic projections, and systems that support consistent execution. Always grounded in one belief: businesses are built on progress, not perfection.
Marcela is especially passionate about helping women learn how to tell their business story with numbers, so they can gain access to funding, grants, and opportunities that too often remain out of reach.
Leading Growth
Most recently, Marcela served as Senior Director of Marketing at ZenBusiness, where she led business and marketing operations during a period of growth and integration.
She led the strategy and go-to-market for VELO, ZenBusiness's AI product, which is now embedded as a key component of both customer engagement and top-of-funnel programs. Her work focused on operational adoption, efficiency gains, and cost-aware execution, aligning product, marketing, operations, and customer education so AI delivered real business value.
On stage with Isabel Guzman, former SBA Administrator
Empowering Underrepresented Founders
Prior to ZenBusiness, Marcela led national education and pitch training programs at Ureeka, supporting underrepresented founders with mentorship, funding readiness, and access to capital.
Through this work, she helped thousands of entrepreneurs learn how to clearly articulate their business models, growth plans, and financial stories.
One of these initiatives evolved into the Blueprint for Success program later adopted by the Dallas Mavericks Business Assist program. During a live pitch event, Kevin O'Leary described the presentations Marcela helped prepare as "a nine out of ten, as good as anything I've seen on Shark Tank."
Interviewing Kevin O'Leary during founder pitch training
CEO / COO roles at venture-backed startups
Built from the Ground Up
Marcela has served as both CEO and COO of early-stage and venture-backed startups.
As a two-time founder, she has raised capital, pitched investors, led investor communications, built business plans grounded in realistic financial projections, and guided teams through launches, pivots, and growth stages.
She knows the founder seat firsthand, and that lived experience shapes how she advises and leads today.
She knows what it's like to pitch, launch, and build with limited resources, and she brings that real-world experience into every system, tool, and workshop she creates.
Fintech Foundation
Earlier in her career, Marcela spent more than a decade in fintech and financial services, leading go-to-market strategy and customer growth for global data platforms.
At Thomson Reuters, later acquired by Refinitiv, she managed global business lines through periods of rapid growth and post-acquisition integration.
She also helped bring mutual fund data online in the early days of the internet, when financial data first became accessible to individual investors. This experience built the foundation for her ability to translate complex systems into tools people can actually use.
Corporate leadership in fintech
Leading with Humanity
As a working mom, proud Colombiana, and first-generation immigrant who built her career from the ground up, Marcela brings a deeply human lens to leadership and operations.
She is known for reducing fear inside organizations, translating chaos into clarity, and helping leaders build businesses that scale without burning out the people inside them.
Bringing Clarity to Complex Topics
Marcela is an experienced speaker and facilitator, known for bringing clarity, practicality, and calm to complex business topics.
Speaking Topics
- •Leadership that reduces fear
- •The COO mindset for founders and executives
- •Business fundamentals founders can execute
- •Turning complexity into operating systems
- •Using AI to improve efficiency and reduce costs
Ideal Speaking Venues
- •Founder communities
- •Chambers of commerce
- •Accelerators & incubators
- •Leadership teams & executive retreats
- •Economic development organizations
On stage with Isabel Guzman, former SBA Administrator
Speaking for the Chamber of Commerce
Let's Connect
Ready to bring clarity and practical systems to your organization? Let's talk about speaking engagements, workshops, or fractional COO support.